President Donald Trump's envoy to the Middle East met Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday, July 31, ahead of a visit to inspect aid distribution in Gaza, as a deadly food crisis drove mounting international pressure for a ceasefire. Steve Witkoff, who has been involved in months of stalled negotiations for a ceasefire and hostage release deal, met Netanyahu shortly after his arrival, the Israeli leader's office said. On Friday, he is to visit Gaza, the White House announced.
Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters that Witkoff, who visited Gaza in January, would inspect "distribution sites and secure a plan to deliver more food and meet with local Gazans to hear firsthand about this dire situation on the ground."
German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul also met Netanyahu in Jerusalem, and afterwards declared: "The humanitarian disaster in Gaza is beyond imagination."
"Here, the Israeli government must act quickly, safely and effectively to provide humanitarian and medical aid to prevent mass starvation from becoming a reality," he said. "I have the impression that this has been understood today."
Even as Wadephul met Israeli leaders, the armed wing of Palestinian militant group Islamic Jihad released a video showing German-Israeli hostage Rom Braslavksi. In the six-minute video, Braslavski, speaking in Hebrew, is seen watching recent news footage of the crisis in Gaza. He identifies himself and pleads with the Israeli government to secure his release. Braslavski was a security guard at the Nova music festival, one of the sites targeted by Hamas and other Palestinian fighters in the October 2023 attack that sparked the Gaza war.
In an example of the deadly problems facing aid efforts in Gaza, the territory's civil defense agency said that at least 58 Palestinians were killed late Wednesday when Israeli forces opened fire on a crowd attempting to block an aid convoy.
The Israeli military said troops had fired "warning shots" as Gazans gathered around the aid trucks. An AFP correspondent saw stacks of bullet-riddled corpses in Gaza City's Al-Shifa Hospital.
Jameel Ashour, who lost a relative in the shooting, told AFP at the overflowing morgue that Israeli troops opened fire after "people saw thieves stealing and dropping food and the hungry crowd rushed in hopes of getting some."
Witkoff has been the top US representative in indirect negotiations between Israel and Hamas but talks in Doha broke down last week and Israel and the United States recalled their delegations.
Israel is under mounting international pressure to agree to a ceasefire and allow the world to flood Gaza with food, with Canada and Portugal the latest Western governments to announce plans to recognize a Palestinian state.
Trump criticized Canada's decision and, in a post on his Truth Social network, placed the blame for the crisis squarely on the Palestinian militant group Hamas.
"The fastest way to end the Humanitarian Crises in Gaza is for Hamas to SURRENDER AND RELEASE THE HOSTAGES!!!" declared Trump, one of Israel's staunchest international supporters. Earlier this week, however, the US president contradicted Netanyahu's insistence that reports of hunger in Gaza were exaggerated, warning that the territory faces "real starvation."
UN-backed experts have reported "famine is now unfolding" in Gaza, with images of sick and emaciated children drawing international outrage. The US State Department said it would deny visas to officials from the Palestinian Authority, which exercises limited self-rule in parts of the Israeli-occupied West Bank – the core of any future Palestinian state.
The Israeli offensive has killed at least 60,249 Palestinians, most of them civilians, according to Hamas-run Gaza's health ministry.